Transparency Is the New Visibility

Today's consumers want to know where their order is at every point in the supply chain and that requires more than supply chain visibility - it requires supply chain transparency, says Marino. One key strategy for achieving transparency is to have a corporate culture driven by corporate KPIs and not by functional silos, she says. This is a major change because most companies today still measure performance by silo, "which makes it very difficult to pull everything together."

"Metrics keyed to corporate-wide performance can be a driving force for people to understand corporate goals and to work together collaboratively," Marino says. "Corporate KPIs are driven from the top down and reflect where the corporation wants to go. Each silo has its own measuring points, but it must also perform to the corporate benchmark on such metrics as sales, margin and cost savings," she says.

"Companies today are investing in technology that provide supply chain transparency because they understand that to perform effectively, and to move from a push to a pull inventory strategy, they have to know where everything is in the supply chain," Marino says. "We have more data than ever before, but to use that data we need a foundation that spans all silos and provides one view for measuring the business."